On Gorée Island, off Dakar, the House of Slaves is a small building with a presence far larger than its rooms. Visitors arrive on foot from the ferry landing and enter a place associated with remembrance of the Atlantic slave trade. The island itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site: its forts, streets, squares and houses preserve layers of Portuguese, Dutch, English and French rule. A visit is not simply an architectural stop but an encounter with how history is commemorated.
UNESCO describes Gorée as a major center of the African coast’s slave trade from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries and calls the island a place of memory and reconciliation. It was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978. The House of Slaves is one of the island’s best-known memorial sites, but UNESCO’s recognition applies to the island and its historic ensemble, not to a claim that every detail in the popular story of this one building is settled by archaeology.